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Overwhelmed Are you someone who when you feel tired or overwhelmed with your work, you start checking emails instead? Why do we do this? It is the same reason why we start with small simple tasks rather than the tougher, more complicated ones. A lot of productivity gurus suggest starting with your most difficult or time consuming task first thing in the morning. However, this can be tough for many of us as we crave that immediate satisfaction of being able to complete things, meaning we go for the easy wins. Checking and processing emails is one of those activities. Don’t Replace Real-time Communication A common recommendation is to not check email in the morning, but to rather batch it and schedule time to process email 2-3 times throughout the day. It is important to remind ourselves that the world still goes on when we ignore emails, and to instead handle them during specific and dedicated times. This also encourages people to contact you in real-time with urgent matters. Inbox Checking Addiction However we know many of you don’t like this structure for managing emails, and prefer to constantly check email to maintain a clean inbox with no emails and by dealing with emails immediately – which is ok as long as your day is not over-taken by email. For some of us, we may not need to separate email from real work, but accept that it is a part of work and building professional relationships in the exchange of…